The present invention relates to pallet racking arrangements and more particularly, relates to a method system for repair of pallet racks.
Pallet racks originally received wide usage in warehouses wherein typically they would extend in a plurality of rows for substantially the height of the building with space being provided between the rows for forklift trucks to move. The forklift trucks would then remove stock from the shelves for the shipping of quantities thereon or for further processing.
More recently, the opening of large warehouse stores to the public have utilized such pallet racks for direct access by the consumer. In this arrangement, the warehouse and retail functions are combined.
Inherently, there are dangers in such a system and safeguards against collapse must be provided. To date, most of the safety concerns have centered around the various design criteria to ensure that the pallet racks are capable of accepting the loads to which they are subjected. Normally, the pallet racks are of a knock down design wherein the shelves or beams are hooked onto a post. The posts are generally perforated to receive the hook elements and various designs of the post have been proposed in the art. One may, for example, refer to U.S. Pat. No. 4,064,996 illustrating such a post structure.
While the use of pallet racks achieves substantial economies for the user, they are very susceptible to damage. Inherently, the loaded pallets must be lifted onto the racks by fork lift trucks. Due to the sometimes limited spaces, accidents are quite frequent wherein the fork lift truck will accidentally collide with one of the support posts. With the very high loads which the pallet racks carry, this is a dangerous situation and any post even slightly damaged must be replaced.
In order to replace the damaged post, the loaded pallets must be removed from the structure and the rack disassembled. After repair, the pallets must then be reloaded on the structure.
The above process is both an expensive and time consuming one. Frequently, once the post has been damaged, the forces acting on the structure will then cause damage to some of the bracing and beams. For safety reasons, it frequently becomes necessary to replace a substantial portion of the structure.
Although it has been proposed in the art to provide post protectors--see U.S. Pat. No. 4,113,110, such post protectors do not assist in preventing damage to the post at a height above the protector.